Posts Tagged 'Television'

With GI Partners' investment into SoftLayer last August and the subsequent merger with The Planet in November, I haven't had a spare moment to write a blog. As I write this, it's just before year end 2010, and now that we are the largest privately held pure-play hosting company in the world, I sort of wonder how soon it will be before SoftLayer TV commercials start popping up. Hey, maybe one day we'll do a Super Bowl commercial! We always dream big.

Thus, I thought I'd try my hand at a script for our first commercial:

INT. IT GUY'S DESK

IT GUY is on phone to SERVER SUPPLIER.

IT GUY

We need another 50 servers as fast as you can get them to us – we are out of capacity and the big guns are demanding better email performance and lower latency for incoming orders and customer service traffic. I wish I could have them tomorrow, but…

SERVER SUPPLIER

Yeah, we can't do tomorrow. Let's see, I think I can squeeze them into next week's production run and then expedite shipping. We can probably have them on your dock in 12-14 days.

IT GUY

Oh boy. I don't know if that will be good enough. I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. I have accounting on my case about minimizing lowly utilized machines while sales, marketing, and operations whine about not keeping enough spare capacity to handle business spikes. I can't win.

SERVER SUPPLIER

Ouch. Wish I could get them there faster, but 12 days is our best-case scenario for you.

IT GUY

OK, thanks for trying. Go ahead and get them here as fast as you can.

SERVER SUPPLIER

You wanna order a few more for a cushion?

IT GUY

Not if I don't want the CFO complaining to my boss about me over ordering – again.

SERVER SUPPLIER

I understand. We'll go with the 50 for now.

IT GUY hangs up the call, still stressed out, talks to himself.

IT GUY

Geez. It'll take the full 14 days to get here. Then we have to rack them, cable them, test them, then provision them. It could be a month before they go live in production. I'm doomed.

Another employee – IT GAL – walks up. She has a cheerful, stress-free demeanor.

IT GAL

So, why do you look so 'doomed'?

IT GUY

The business units I support need 50 new servers by yesterday. I'll be lucky to have them online and in production in a month.

IT GAL

What? Why so long?

IT GUY

Well, that's how long it will take them to be built, and shipped, and racked, and cabled, and tested, and provisioned, and...

IT GAL

[Cuts him off.] You should just use SoftLayer.

IT GUY

What? Who's that?

IT GAL

That's who I use in a pinch. Heck, it's who I use most all the time for infrastructure for the groups I support.

IT GUY

How's that?

IT GAL

Here, let me drive.

IT GUY stands up. IT GAL sits down at his workstation. Move to screen shots of customer portal where applicable.

IT GAL

Here's my account at SoftLayer. Notice that I have servers as my foundation combined with cloud computing capacity that I can adjust on the fly and pay for it by the hour. If I need more power, I ramp up the cloud portion and boost my computing power in 5 minutes – not a month. Here, I'll show you. Click here, Click here and voila! I just added another cloud server. It'll be in production in 5 minutes. It's an hourly machine, so I can release it at the end of the day and it will cost me less than $20.

IT GUY

But how do your groups know that the new cloud server is out there for use?

IT GAL

I use SoftLayer's API connections. To them, it looks like any other server that's available on our corporate network.

IT GUY

It's that easy?

IT GAL

Yep.

IT GUY

So how do you comply with our backup plan guidelines and disaster recovery planning?

IT GAL

Easy. The production data lives in SoftLayer's Dallas facility. I back it all up at their Seattle facility, and the data moves over SoftLayer's private network that isn't exposed to the public internet. And all transit on the private network is free and doesn't count against my public internet bandwidth limits.

IT GUY

Speaking of bandwidth, what if one of those servers goes over its limit? Do you get hit with overage charges?

IT GAL

No. SoftLayer offers bandwidth pooling between servers as well as global load balancing. You can add it on the fly too.

IT GUY

Firewalls?

IT GAL

Also on the fly. No downtime at all.

IT GUY

Wow, I never knew a place like this existed. How do I get started? And how does your department pay for it?

IT GAL

You've got a corporate purchasing card, right?

IT GUY

Yeah.

IT GAL

Give them a call, order your servers, and pay with that card. It's a month-to-month contract. Just give 24 hours notice to cancel. Your first setup will take about 4 hours, but you'll be home at dinner tonight with your 50 new servers online. Not a month from now.

IT GUY

Thanks for the info! Boy, that's a relief.

IT GAL

After calling SoftLayer, don't forget to cancel that order of 50 to come here in a month.

Growing up I would consider myself an average kid. I played football and basketball outside with my brothers; we’d come home every day from school and turn on cartoons. Depending on the day it may have been power rangers or the animaniacs, rarely would we ever dare tune into PBS for entertainment. I started thinking about this as my son of 17 months is beginning to use single words and overall starting to communicate more with me, and consequently starting to want to repeat everything he hears. We were watching cartoons last Saturday morning and I noticed something strange, every cartoon appeared to be teaching him way more then I remember the cartoons of my time teaching me.

Sure there were a few of the ones I expected, but the vast majority had a lot of learning. Even the commercials had learning games and exercises mixed in. With the amount of information younger generations have these days it makes me wonder just how much my son is picking up. Is it crazy to think by four or five he will know at least one hundred words of Chinese (Ni Hao, Kai Lan), and one hundred words of Spanish (Dora the Explorer), at this rate I don’t think that’s too crazy an accomplishment as he’s learning all of this while having fun in his eyes.

Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if your child came up to you and spoke a sentence in Chinese, and you had to tell him to hold on while you “googled” what he was trying to say. Before I had a child I always said, “I am not letting my child watch cartoons, that stuff will just make him less likely to enjoy learning and other activities.” Now I not only love the idea, but it’s fun and exciting for me too since I get to learn as well. My dad was always breaking and building computers when I was a kid so naturally I picked up on that and made it into what I do today. I’m not sure what effect if any these educational shows will have on him career or otherwise but I think overall shows today are making great progress in spurring children’s hunger to learn , which is great as I will be trying to teach him his ABC’s in the coming months. I just hope he doesn’t expect me to wear a funny hat and dance with stuffed animals in the process.

Seattle baby! That's what's next. With that being said I thought I would blog about Tom Hanks. I know you wish you had thought of this one too. I chose him because I figure he has done enough movies and other things that I can actually have enough content and he did do "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail" and they are both closely related to our expansion. Why, you ask? Right now we have a few guys in Seattle installing cage nuts -- 17,280 to be exact. That is 1 cage nut installed every 5 seconds for 24 hours straight (Sleepless!). I hate that I am missing out on that fun. Writing blogs is nice too I suppose.
So here we go Tom Hanks and SoftLayer!

SoftLayer works because we are all "Bosom Buddies". We all get along. Hopefully all of us will continue to be famous afterwards and not just half of us. That would make for a lot of "Happy Days" in the future. We also have quite a few "Family Ties" as we have a brother/sister pair (Fleitman), and 3 brother pairs (Kinman/Laude/Guerra/Harris) and we can't forget the Father/Son set (Rushe) family keeps things fun and busy! If we continue to grow at this rate we will all be making a "Splash" soon when we leave our competitors in the dust. When that happens we will have a party to rival the likes of the "Bachelor Party" and we can invite "The Man with One Red Shoe" and will need some "Volunteers" to serve the Hors D'oeuvres.

I bet most of you didn't know that Tom Hanks was in "Real Genius" but I will use it anyway because we really do have some real geniuses here (Everyone take a bow). This keeps us from turning into a "Money Pit" and on the top of our game. I could say that before SoftLayer all of us would have been just a bunch of guys with "Nothing in Common" but it seems that "Every Time We Say Goodbye" we seem to end up back together. Even having to go through the "Dragnet" is worth it, because we all want to be "Big" and have the last laugh in the "Punchline".

We all drive in from "The Burbs" almost daily just to make sure we make our customers happy and we let the kids watch "Turner and Hooch" on the in-car DVD on the way to daycare. Once we get here we keep the "Joe Versus the Volcano" attitude and will take on any problem and get it solved.

To keep it light, once a year we go play in Muenster and Sam cooks up the BBQ on "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and we pig out and have a blast. There are some great "Tales from the Crypt" after those parties. Sam and his cooking crew won 3rd place last year and that puts them truly in "A League of Their Own".

Meanwhile the guys are still "Sleepless in Seattle" and Lance is spending his nights thinking of the next location. I really doubt it will be "Philadelphia" at least I hope not, too many Eagles up there. Go Cowboys!

Note: I am pretty sure I am the "Forrest Gump" of SoftLayer. I think Gump had ADHD like me and that is why he wanted to be and do so many things in his life. I take pride in that! You can always tell by my blogs.

Back to being the best -- in "Apollo 13" the most famous line in the movie (true story too) was "Houston, we have a problem" I bet there are some competitors to SoftLayer out there that are saying that same thing right about now with our continued growth and that isn't some kid's "Toy Story" that is the honest truth. We do it with customer service and the best product. Why? We just like hearing our customers say over and over, keep doing "That thing you do" and we will keep buying your service. That hurts the competition sometimes. We aren't sorry about that. We will go "From the Earth to the Moon" to continue to make our customers happy and we will make sure "You've got Mail" when something important is coming and it will not be just another "Toy Story 2". Even if it is like "Saving Private Ryan" we do anything we can to make it happen. All while walking "The Green Mile" because taking care of our environment is very important to us. (You didn't think I was going to talk about the death penalty did you?)

Some people like to look at us as a "Castaway", but we truly are a "Band of Brothers" on the road to fruition instead of the "Road to Perdition" like so many others. I welcome all readers to try and "Catch me if you can" in this blog and let me know of the movies I have missed so far. I will admit I have skipped a few TV appearances so you have to let me slide on those.

One of these days I might have to blog on "Freedom: A History of Us" and let you know where we all came from and what got us here. It is a long list of "Great Performances" that would impress you. Some of us were the smart geeky type and some of us were "The Ladykillers" and could have fun at an airport in "The Terminal".

I am getting close to the end now so the Narrator would now say, "Elvis has left the Building" on the "Polar Express" or was it in a pack of "Cars", oh well either way. I hope reading this blog has been an enjoyable experience and not like trying to "Crack the Da Vinci Code".